Impending doom? Universal Analytics (UA) is being upgraded to GA4

26th Apr, 2023

Google is changing from Universal Analytics to GA4 (Google Analytics 4) to provide better insights, a more user-friendly interface, and advanced analysis features that reflect the changes in consumer behaviour and the evolution of digital marketing.

The change to Google’s main web property tracking, is largely driven by The Privacy Revolution and Google’s decision to become “cookieless”. Although Google aimed to forego cookies by 2023, they have decided to delay the transition into 2024, to give marketers time to adjust their strategies and operational functions, however, the sunset of Universal Analytics will definitely take place as of 1 July 2023.

What is Universal Analytics (UA)?

Universal Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google that allows website owners and marketers to track and analyse user behaviour on their websites. It provides insights into how users interact with websites, including information on user demographics, behaviour, and traffic sources. 

Universal Analytics tracks website visits, page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other metrics, allowing website owners and marketers to measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and improve the user experience on their websites. 

It uses a tracking code that is placed on each page of a website to collect data, which is then sent to Google Analytics for analysis and reporting. 

 

What does Universal Analytics (UA) track? 

Google's Universal Analytics tracks various types of data related to user behaviour on websites or mobile applications. 

Here are some of the key types of data that Universal Analytics tracks:
 

1. Pageviews: The number of times a particular page on your website has been viewed.
2. Sessions: A group of interactions (such as pageviews, events, or transactions) that occur within a given time frame on your website or app.
3. Users: The total number of unique users who have visited your website or used your app.
4. Events: User interactions with specific elements on your website or app, such as clicks on buttons, downloads, video plays, or form submissions.
5. Conversions: When a user completes a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up for a newsletter.
6. Referral sources: The sources of traffic that bring users to your website or app, such as search engines, social media, or referral websites.
7. Demographic and interests: Information about the age, gender, interests, and other demographic data of your users.
8. Technology and device: Information about the devices, browsers, operating systems, and other technical data related to user interactions on your website or app.

Overall, Universal Analytics provides a wealth of data that can help you better understand your users' behaviour, preferences, and interactions with your website or app.

What is GA4?

GA4, or Google Analytics 4, is the latest version of the Google Analytics platform that provides advanced tracking and analysis capabilities for websites and mobile apps. It is a significant upgrade from the previous Universal Analytics platform, offering more advanced features and a more user-centric approach to data tracking and analysis.

GA4 uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse user behaviour across multiple devices and platforms, providing a more complete view of user interactions with a website or app. It also provides improved event-tracking capabilities, allowing website owners and marketers to track user interactions with specific elements on their website or app.

Overall, GA4 provides a more comprehensive and privacy-focused approach to data tracking and analysis, offering more advanced features and improved insights into user behaviour across multiple platforms and devices.

What does GA4 track?

GA4 (Google Analytics 4) tracks similar types of data to Universal Analytics but with some additional features and enhancements. Here are some of the key types of data that GA4 tracks:
 

1. Event-driven data: GA4 is designed to track events more effectively than Universal Analytics, which allows for a more flexible and granular approach to tracking user behaviour.
2. User-centric data: GA4 focuses on user-centric data, which means that it tracks data related to individual users across multiple devices and platforms.
3. Cross-platform tracking: GA4 offers improved cross-platform tracking, which means that it can track user interactions across mobile apps, websites, and other digital platforms.
4. Machine learning data: GA4 incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide more accurate predictions and insights into user behaviour.
5. Enhanced privacy controls: GA4 offers enhanced privacy controls that are designed to comply with evolving privacy regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA and in South Africa, POPIA.
6. Streamlined reporting: GA4 offers a more streamlined and user-friendly reporting interface that is designed to provide actionable insights more quickly and efficiently.
7. Advanced audience insights: GA4 offers more advanced audience insights, which means that you can gain a better understanding of your target audience and their preferences.

Overall, GA4 offers a more modern and flexible approach to tracking user behaviour, with enhanced features and capabilities that reflect the changing nature of digital marketing and user behaviour.

What are the benefits of GA4?

GA4 (Google Analytics 4) offers several benefits over Universal Analytics and other analytics platforms. 

Here are some of the key benefits of GA4:

1. Enhanced user-centric data: GA4 is designed to track user behaviour across multiple platforms and devices, allowing you to gain a more complete view of how users interact with your brand.
2. Improved event tracking: GA4 offers improved event tracking capabilities, allowing you to track user interactions with specific elements on your website or app more effectively.
3. Advanced analysis tools: GA4 provides advanced analysis tools that allow you to identify trends and patterns in user behaviour more easily, such as funnel analysis, path analysis, and user segmentation.
4. Machine learning and AI capabilities: GA4 incorporates machine learning and AI capabilities, allowing you to gain more accurate insights into user behaviour and make more informed decisions.
5. Privacy controls: GA4 offers enhanced privacy controls that are designed to comply with evolving privacy regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA and POPIA.
6. Streamlined reporting: GA4 provides a more streamlined and user-friendly reporting interface that is designed to provide actionable insights more quickly and efficiently.
7. Customisation: GA4 allows you to customise your data tracking and reporting to better suit your business needs, such as custom event tracking and custom reporting.
8. Cross-platform tracking: GA4 offers improved cross-platform tracking, allowing you to track user behaviour across mobile apps, websites, and other digital platforms more effectively.
9. Improved ecommerce tracking: GA4 provides improved e-commerce tracking capabilities, allowing you to track sales and revenue more effectively across multiple platforms.

Overall, GA4 offers a more comprehensive and flexible approach to tracking and analysing user behaviour, with advanced features and capabilities that can be customised in a reporting dashboard that makes sense to your business. 

The change in the interface does mean that business owners and marketing teams alike, need to focus more on aligning their marketing efforts to their brand strategies or business objectives, and that they need to really focus on what customer activities actually make sense for their business.

Once businesses and brands have a better understanding of what they aim to achieve with their marketing efforts, GA4’s enhanced data and analytics reporting will become a powerful measurement tool when understanding the effectiveness of internet marketing strategies and methodologies.

Here are the reasons why Google is changing from Universal Analytics (UA) to GA4:
 

1. Customer-centricity: GA4 offers a more customer-centric approach to tracking user behaviour across multiple devices and platforms, providing a more complete view of customer interactions with your brand.
2. Machine Learning: GA4 incorporates more machine learning and AI capabilities, allowing for more accurate predictions and more effective audience targeting.
3. Privacy: GA4 is designed with privacy in mind, providing a more privacy-conscious approach to data collection and management.
4. Cross-platform tracking: GA4 provides better cross-platform tracking, allowing you to track customer interactions across mobile apps and websites more effectively.
5. Better engagement measurement: GA4 offers more advanced event tracking, which allows you to track and measure customer engagement more accurately.

Overall, the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4 represents a significant improvement in the capabilities and functionalities of Google Analytics, offering marketers and businesses a more comprehensive and effective tool for tracking and analysing customer behaviour.

How will the upgrade affect website and applications analytics data?

The GA4 upgrade may affect website and application analytics data in a few ways, as it involves significant changes to the way data is collected and analysed. 

Here are some of the ways in which the GA4 upgrade may affect your analytics data:

1. Different data model: GA4 uses a different data model than Universal Analytics, which means that the way data is collected and organised will be different, affecting the way data is analysed and reported back to key stakeholders.
2. New event tracking capabilities: GA4 offers improved event tracking capabilities, allowing you to track user interactions with specific elements on your website or app more effectively. However, this will require you to make changes to your event tracking setup. Marketing teams and business owners alike will need to understand the purpose of their website and what user events are important to them, ahead of implementing a new event tracking strategy.
3. User-centric data tracking: GA4 is designed to track user behaviour across multiple platforms and devices, allowing you to gain a more complete view of how users interact with your brand, online. However, this will require you to update your tracking setup to account for cross-platform tracking.
4. Machine learning and AI capabilities: GA4 incorporates machine learning and AI capabilities, allowing you to gain more accurate insights into user behaviour and make more informed decisions. However, this will require you to adjust your data analysis workflows to take advantage of these capabilities.
5. Different reporting interface: GA4 provides a more streamlined and user-friendly reporting interface than Universal Analytics, and it is customisable. This will require some adjustment to your reporting workflows.
6. Limited historical data: When you upgrade to GA4, you may lose some historical data that was collected using Universal Analytics. However, you can still access this data in your Universal Analytics account and use the information to create meaningful audiences in GA4.

Overall, the GA4 upgrade represents a significant shift in the way web data is collected and analysed, which will require some adjustments to your analytics workflows. However, the new features and capabilities offered by GA4 can help you gain a more complete understanding of user behaviour on your web properties and make more informed decisions with your marketing strategies.

How to understand the new GA4 data:

Understanding the new GA4 data can be a little different from the data in Universal Analytics. 

Here are some steps you can take to better understand GA4 data:

1. Familiarise yourself with the new data model: GA4 uses a different data model than Universal Analytics, so it's important to understand the new structure of data collection and organisation. This can help you better understand how data is being collected and how it can be analysed.
2. Use the new event tracking capabilities: GA4 offers improved event tracking capabilities that allow you to track user interactions with specific elements on your website or app more effectively. Take advantage of these new capabilities to better understand how users are interacting with your digital properties.
3. Use the new user-centric data tracking: GA4 is designed to track user behaviour across multiple platforms and devices, so make sure to take advantage of this capability to gain a more complete view of how users are interacting with your brand.
4. Take advantage of machine learning and AI capabilities: GA4 incorporates machine learning and AI capabilities, allowing you to gain more accurate insights into user behaviour and make more informed decisions. Make sure to use these features to your advantage to gain a deeper understanding of your audience.
5. Adjust your reporting workflows: GA4 provides a more streamlined and user-friendly reporting interface than Universal Analytics, so you may need to adjust your reporting workflows to take advantage of the new interface.
6. Use the new analysis tools: GA4 provides advanced analysis tools that allow you to identify trends and patterns in user behaviour more easily, such as funnel analysis, path analysis, and user segmentation. Make sure to use these tools to gain deeper insights into user behaviour and make more informed decisions.
7. Take advantage of cross-platform tracking: GA4 offers improved cross-platform tracking, allowing you to track user behaviour across mobile apps, websites, and other digital platforms more effectively. Make sure to take advantage of this capability to gain a more complete view of user behaviour.

Overall, understanding the new GA4 data requires some adjustment to your analytics workflows, but taking advantage of the new features and capabilities will only assist you in understanding your online audiences better and improve your digital marketing efforts.

How will GA4 impact digital marketing?

GA4 is expected to have a significant impact on digital marketing due to its advanced capabilities and features. 

Improved cross-platform tracking and enhanced event tracking will provide a more complete picture of how users interact with your brand, helping you to make better-informed marketing decisions. When analysing the data correctly, you can use the information to dynamically market to customers as well as personalise your marketing efforts.

Advanced machine learning and AI capabilities and improved reporting will enable you to gain more accurate insights into user behaviour. For example, GA4's predictive metrics feature can help you identify high-value users and prioritise your marketing efforts accordingly.

Overall, GA4 is going to enhance digital marketing capabilities and effectiveness. Yes, more time will need to be invested upfront to tag and track a web property with semantics to a business or brand's objectives and in a way that makes sense to the brand so that the data can be used to make better marketing decisions, but the change to the platform remains positive for digital marketers globally.

What can you do to prepare for Universal Analytics sunsetting and switching to GA4?

To prepare for the sunsetting of Universal Analytics and the switch to GA4, here are some steps you can take:

1. Learn about the new GA4 platform: Find a certified, trusted partner that can explain the differences and offer a solution on how to make the new platform work for your business.
2. Evaluate your current Universal Analytics setup: Review your current Universal Analytics setup to identify any gaps in your data tracking or analysis. This will help you determine what changes you need to make to ensure a smooth transition to GA4. Again, a certified partner can assist you with this.
3. Set up a parallel tracking implementation: Implement a parallel tracking setup to start collecting data in GA4 alongside your existing Universal Analytics implementation. This will ensure that you continue to collect data during the transition period and give you time to adjust your tracking setup. If you are using an agency for your digital marketing efforts, your agency should have done this for you already.
4. Update your event tracking setup: GA4 offers improved event tracking capabilities, so take the time to update your event tracking setup to take advantage of these new features. This will help you better understand how users are interacting with your website or app. At Ideation Digital, we will happily meet with you to understand which events generate the most value for your business and handle the full implementation thereof.
5. Update your measurement strategy: With GA4, you'll need to update your measurement strategy to account for changes in the data model and reporting interface. This may require you to adjust your data analysis workflows and reporting processes. At Ideation Digital, we will meet with all our clients to update their measurement strategy in a way that makes sense to the business and its stakeholders.
6. Train your team: Make sure your team is trained on the new GA4 platform and understands how to use its features and capabilities. This will help ensure a smooth transition and minimise disruption to your analytics workflows. Alternatively, deploy a trained and certified team to assist you with the transition.
7. Create a migration plan: Develop a migration plan that outlines the steps that need to be taken to transition from Universal Analytics to GA4. This should include a timeline, a list of tasks, and assigned responsibilities to ensure a smooth transition.If you deploy an agency, they should provide you with a migration plan ahead of the Universal Analytics sunset deadline.

The upgrade from Universal Analytics to GA4 will empower digital marketers and evolve the digital marketing landscape into a better return on investment, greater brand advocacy driven by personalised marketing and improved digital landscape insights that makes internet users feel safer and in more control. 

No-one needs to view the transition as doom and gloom. With a trusted, certified partner, GA4 will streamline marketing functions and provide enhanced reporting for more-informed decision making.

If you are interested in working with a partner, contact Ideation Digital for a consultative meeting on updating workflows and measurement strategies that will capitalise on the enhanced features of GA4 and empower you to improve your digital marketing efforts.